Pure practical reason is the opposite to impure (or sensibly-determined) practical reason and appears in Immanuel Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals.
It is the reason that drives actions without any sensible incentives. Human reasoning chooses such actions simply because those actions are good in themselves; this is the nature of good will, which Kant argues is the only concept that is good without any justification, it is good in itself and is a derivative of a transcendental law which affects the way humans practically reason (see practical philosophy).
Famous quotes containing the words pure, practical and/or reason:
“What sought they thus afar?
Bright jewels of the mine?
The wealthy of seas, the spoils of war?—
They sought a faith’s pure shrine!
Ay, call it holy ground,
The soil where first they trod;
They have left unstained what there they found,—
Freedom to worship God.”
—Felicia Dorothea Hemans (1783–1835)
“No delusion is greater than the notion that method and industry can make up for lack of mother-wit, either in science or in practical life.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895)
“Pity on the person who has become accustomed to seeing in necessity something arbitrary, who ascribes to the arbitrary some sort of reason, and even claims that following that sort of reason has religious value.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)